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Japan’s FY2027 defense budget request reveals a massive shift toward long-range counterstrike weapons, underwater hypersonics, and specialized air-to-air capabilities. From the ramjet-powered ASM-3 Kai targeting airborne early warning platforms to stealth cruise missiles designed to bypass naval CIWS guns, Tokyo is building a multi-layered deterrent against PLA operations around Taiwan and the Nansei Islands. Discover how Japan's revised defense export laws and new Aegis warships are reshaping the Indo-Pacific military balance.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Japan's FY2027 Defense Budget Request and ASM-3 Kai Multi-Role Hint
01:46 - Record 8.89 Trillion Yen Budget and 2% GDP Counterstrike Expansion
03:04 - ASM-3 Kai Supersonic Ramjet vs. Chinese Early Warning Aircraft
06:26 - The "New SSM" Barrel-Rolling Cruise Missile and Yonaguni Deployment
09:23 - Underwater-Launched Hypersonic Missiles and Unmanned Submarines
11:58 - Massive Aegis System Equipped Vessels (ASEV) & SPY-7 Radar
14:14 - Kawasaki EC-2 Standoff Electronic Warfare Aircraft
15:02 - Wargaming a Taiwan Strait Contingency & PLA Anti-Access Countermeasures
17:03 - Supply Chain Vulnerabilities and Chinese Commercial Drone Dependencies
18:12 - Scrapping Postwar Export Bans: Revision of the Three Principles
19:09 - Australian Missile Range Agreement & Regional Allied Proliferation
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
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SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/4RwgNd3c
Japan’s FY2027 defense budget request reveals a massive shift toward long-range counterstrike weapons, underwater hypersonics, and specialized air-to-air capabilities. From the ramjet-powered ASM-3 Kai targeting airborne early warning platforms to stealth cruise missiles designed to bypass naval CIWS guns, Tokyo is building a multi-layered deterrent against PLA operations around Taiwan and the Nansei Islands. Discover how Japan's revised defense export laws and new Aegis warships are reshaping the Indo-Pacific military balance.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Japan's FY2027 Defense Budget Request and ASM-3 Kai Multi-Role Hint
01:46 - Record 8.89 Trillion Yen Budget and 2% GDP Counterstrike Expansion
03:04 - ASM-3 Kai Supersonic Ramjet vs. Chinese Early Warning Aircraft
06:26 - The "New SSM" Barrel-Rolling Cruise Missile and Yonaguni Deployment
09:23 - Underwater-Launched Hypersonic Missiles and Unmanned Submarines
11:58 - Massive Aegis System Equipped Vessels (ASEV) & SPY-7 Radar
14:14 - Kawasaki EC-2 Standoff Electronic Warfare Aircraft
15:02 - Wargaming a Taiwan Strait Contingency & PLA Anti-Access Countermeasures
17:03 - Supply Chain Vulnerabilities and Chinese Commercial Drone Dependencies
18:12 - Scrapping Postwar Export Bans: Revision of the Three Principles
19:09 - Australian Missile Range Agreement & Regional Allied Proliferation
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/4RwgNd3c
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NewsTranscript
00:01On the last day of August 2026, Japan's Ministry of Defense published a document that few people outside the defense
00:08community are likely to read all the way through.
00:11It was the budget request for fiscal year 2027, running to hundreds of pages of line items for rifle ammunition,
00:19fuel contracts, barracks upgrades and parts shortages.
00:22And buried in a subsection about ammunition stockpiles and industrial resilience was a short but interesting phrase.
00:29The Ministry described one of its missiles, the ASM-3 Kai, as an air-to-surface and possibly even an
00:36anti-air missile.
00:38Why is this so peculiar? Well, the ASM-3 family has only ever been publicly associated with sinking ships.
00:45It's a large supersonic weapon designed to be slung under the wings of a Mitsubishi F2 and thrown at an
00:51enemy fleet.
00:52But the moment you attach the anti-air phrasing to a missile that reportedly flies more than 400 kilometers at
00:59around Mach 3, you potentially have a new credible threat.
01:02And this is a good way to introduce what's actually been happening in Japan over the past three years.
01:08The country has spent decades building a military shaped by a defense-oriented policy, but has been quietly assembling an
01:15arsenal with increasingly long-range capabilities.
01:18Today, we're going to walk through what we actually know about Japanese weapons, how each one would be used in
01:24a shooting war with China,
01:26and where the public information stops and the speculation begins.
01:29But before we can get there, make sure to subscribe to The Military Show in order to get the latest
01:35news on global geopolitics and warfare.
01:38And if you want access to more exclusive content, become a member to directly support our efforts in quality content
01:44creation.
01:45Let's start with the money, because the money frames everything.
01:48Japan's Ministry of Defense asked for roughly 8.89 trillion yen for the 2027 fiscal year.
01:55In dollars, that's somewhere between 55 and 56 billion dollars.
02:00And the fact that we have to say somewhere in between is itself part of the story.
02:04The Ministry calculated the request at a planning rate of 149 yen to the dollar.
02:09But the yen was trading closer to 160 when the request landed.
02:13So every American-made system priced in dollars would cost Japan substantially more in yen than the headline figures suggest.
02:20This is also the fifth and final installment of the 43 trillion yen defense build-up program that Tokyo launched
02:27in December 2022.
02:29And when Tokyo designed its five-year build-up, it used a much more modest 108 yen to the dollar.
02:35This is the same package that came with a formal decision to acquire what Japan calls a counter-strike capability.
02:42Meaning the ability to hit military targets inside an adversary's territory after Japan has been attacked.
02:49Japan also hit its target of spending 2% of GDP two full years ahead of schedule.
02:54Once the blanks are filled in, defense officials have suggested the final enacted budget could pass 10 trillion yen, a
03:01new record.
03:03Now the weapons.
03:03First is the ASM-3 Kai from the intro, because it's the one that generated the mystery.
03:09The baseline ASM-3 is a domestically developed missile designed for the F-2.
03:15It's ramjet-powered, which actually matters.
03:18Most air-to-air missiles use a rocket motor that burns hard for a few seconds and then coasts, bleeding
03:23energy the whole way to the target.
03:25But a ramjet keeps burning, sustaining speed instead of trading it away, which is why reported figures put the ASM
03:32-3 Kai at around Mach 3 with a reach beyond 400 kilometers.
03:36The exact operational range is classified, and the program has gone through at least five distinct external configurations over its
03:43development history.
03:44So the missile that eventually enters service may not look much like the one photographed under an F-2 at
03:50Gifu.
03:50The seeker is where it gets interesting.
03:53The ASM-3 uses a combined active and passive radar seeker.
03:56The active radar lights up a target with its own radar, while the passive homes in on emissions.
04:02For an anti-ship missile, that's a useful redundancy.
04:05For an anti-air missile, it's close to a purpose-built solution to one specific problem.
04:10That problem is China's airborne early warning fleet.
04:13The People's Liberation Army operates dozens of increasingly capable fixed-wing radar aircraft, while the new KJ-3000 is undergoing
04:22development and flight testing.
04:24These are the aircraft that let China see deep, coordinate fighters, and push its center coverage far past its own
04:30coastline.
04:31They're also, by physical necessity, screaming into the electromagnetic spectrum the entire time they're doing it.
04:37A large missile with a passive seeker, hundreds of kilometers of reach, and a ramjet keeping it fast the whole
04:43way, is a very direct answer to an aircraft that cannot hide and cannot maneuver.
04:48So here's what that would mean in a conflict.
04:51Chinese anti-access planning depends on pushing Japanese and American fighters back, while keeping Chinese command and control aircraft close
04:59enough to be useful.
05:00If Japan can credibly threaten those aircraft from three or four hundred kilometers out, the PLA has to move them
05:06further back.
05:07And, you don't have to shoot a single early warning aircraft down.
05:11You just have to make operating them near the fight look like a losing proposition.
05:15The same logic applies to tankers, jammers, and intelligence aircraft, now all convenient targets for the same type of weapon.
05:22Do note that there's no indication that the ASM-3 Kai has ever been tested against an aircraft.
05:28The designation could reflect a broad classification convention inside the budget document.
05:34It could also describe a future variant rather than the current weapon.
05:37Everything above is what the capability would mean if the designation is real.
05:42But what's not in doubt is the direction of travel around it.
05:45The same budget request names the AGM-88G Argum-ER, which is an extended-range anti-radiation missile designed to
05:53kill air defense radars.
05:54Japan hasn't previously been publicly documented as an Argum-ER customer.
05:59It also funds upgrading an initial 10 F-2s to carry the air launch version of the upgraded Type 12
06:05anti-ship missile.
06:07Put those together and you get a picture of an air force that's building a weapon for tearing holes in
06:12a dense integrated air defense network and destroying the aircraft that hold it together.
06:16Now for the second weapon, and this one is arguably more interesting because it does something genuinely strange.
06:23Japan is developing what it currently calls the island defense missile, or simply the new SSM.
06:29Kawasaki has been on the project since 2023, and in January 2026 footage surfaced in a montage released by Japan's
06:37Acquisition Technology and Logistics Agency showing a prototype doing something you rarely see a cruise missile do on camera, barrel
06:45rolling.
06:45Official Japanese graphics have depicted the missile corkscrewing past what appears to be a Chinese Type 730 close-in weapon
06:53system, the 7-barrel 30mm Gatling gun that forms part of a warship's close-in defenses against incoming missiles.
07:01An improved 11-barrel version, the Type 1130, is already in Chinese service, and China has experimented with even larger
07:08designs.
07:09The logic is brutally simple. A close-in gun system aims at where the missile will be, computing a firing
07:16solution off the target's current track and putting a wall of metal at that point in space.
07:20A missile flying a predictable line makes that computation easy.
07:24A missile spiraling unpredictably around its own axis forces the gun to keep resolving the problem, and every calculation is
07:31more time the missile has to get closer uncontested.
07:34The concept itself is not new, as Norway's naval strike missile is also designed to perform high-G terminal maneuvers,
07:42although not the same barrel roll maneuver shown by the new SSM.
07:45However, Japan hasn't confirmed the range of the new SSM. What officials have said is that it will exceed the
07:52Type 12s, which reaches about 200km, while an upgraded Type 12 now in development is suggested to have a range
07:59of 900-1000km.
08:01So, the new SSM could even start somewhere past that upper figure.
08:05There's also the possibility of using the same basic airframe as the basis for a land attack weapon, a dedicated
08:12decoy, or a loitering surveillance platform that could strike what it finds.
08:16That blurs the line between cruise missile and drone, and it means that Japan would be building one production line
08:22and getting four or five weapons out of it.
08:24Let's put the weapon through a hypothetical field test.
08:27The Japanese island of Yonaguni sits roughly 70 miles from Taiwan's northern shore.
08:33Japan has already been moving to bolster air defenses there.
08:36Even at the low end of plausible range, new SSMs based on Yonaguni would cover the waters around Taiwan, the
08:43Bashi Channel approaches, and portions of the Chinese mainland coast.
08:47If deployed from ground launchers, destroyers, F2s, and P1 maritime patrol aircraft, they could potentially arrive at a Chinese amphibious
08:55group from launchers that are individually cheap to hide and expensive to find.
09:00Now, if you're finding this useful, take a second to hit subscribe.
09:04It really helps us keep making these, and there's a lot more where this came from.
09:08Now, let's get to the part of Japan's arsenal that nobody has seen at all.
09:12In August 2026, Japan's Ministry of Defense was reported to have begun planning an underwater-launched hypersonic missile under its
09:21fiscal 2027 program.
09:23Japanese officials have carefully framed the program as research rather than a committed acquisition, and it sits among those unpriced
09:30item requests.
09:31The news outlet that covered the report described the weapon as underwater-launched, while Russia's tasks use the more specific
09:37term of submarine-launched.
09:40What is known is that the platform work is already underway underneath it.
09:44Japan has funded development of a vertical launch system for future conventionally powered diesel-electric submarines running from 2026 to
09:522029 at an estimated 3.9 billion yen, or about $25 million.
09:57The system is being designed to be versatile, fitting long-range cruise missiles, a naval version of Japan's hypersonic glide
10:05weapon, and eventually, a purpose-built underwater-launched hypersonic.
10:09Separately, the budget request floats a submarine-launched-guided missile, and research into standoff missile launch modules for unmanned underwater
10:17vehicles.
10:18Let's hold on for a bit on that last part.
10:21Japan is not only working on arming its submarines, but it's making robot submarines.
10:25The Defense Ministry apparently plans to have AI-equipped, long-endurance underwater drones whose payload can be swapped between missiles
10:33and torpedoes.
10:34A big advantage here is that when compared to crewed submarines, underwater drones can be built and deployed in much
10:40bigger numbers.
10:41So why does putting a hypersonic missile underwater change the arithmetic so much?
10:47Because every other piece of Japan's counter-strike force shares a weakness. It can be found.
10:52Land-based launchers can be located, tracked, and hit.
10:56Surfer ships can be found and hit.
10:58A missile force that can be destroyed on the ground in an opening salvo doesn't deter anybody,
11:03because the adversary's planners will simply build a big enough opening salvo.
11:06A submerged launcher is a different problem entirely.
11:10It moves.
11:11Its positions can be difficult to pinpoint.
11:13It can sit somewhere in an enormous volume of ocean, and there is no set of coordinates to put on
11:18a targeting list.
11:19Combine that with a hypersonic glide vehicle, and you get a weapon that's hard to find before launch, and hard
11:25to intercept after it.
11:26That's not a speed upgrade, it's a survivability argument, and survivability is the entire mechanism by which a retaliatory threat
11:34works.
11:34Such a system could give Japan a more survivable means of holding enemy bases at risk, particularly if it could
11:40remain undetected before launch.
11:42Which brings us to how Japan plans to defend itself.
11:46Japan's first Aegis system-equipped vessel is taking shape at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries yard in Nagasaki,
11:52and the pictures that emerged in late August finally gave people a sense of scale.
11:57This ship is a monster, at 620 feet long, with an 82-foot beam and a standard displacement of 12
12:04,000 tons.
12:05For reference, Japan's current largest surface combatants, the Maya-class, have stats of 557 feet, 73 feet and around 8
12:13,200 tons.
12:15The reason it's that big is sitting on top of it.
12:18In late August, the first ship received its enormous integrated mast, which will eventually carry four fixed arrays for the
12:25AN-SPY-7V-1 radar,
12:28all in the same size class as the SPY-6 on America's Flight 3, Ali Burks.
12:33Putting the arrays on a dedicated mast, rather than on the superstructure, creates an unobstructed elevated line of sight to
12:39the horizon,
12:40which enables tracking low-flying cruise missiles and drones coming at the ship itself.
12:44Japan's 2026 Defense White Paper credits the SPY-7 with five times the tracking capability of the older SPY-1,
12:52specifically against lofted trajectories and simultaneous multiple ballistic missile threats.
12:58The radar itself is a derivative of the American long-range discrimination radar in Alaska,
13:03which is a good indication of what it was designed to do.
13:06Japan originally intended to install it ashore at two Aegis Ashore sites.
13:11Public opposition killed that plan, and the ASEV emerged to replace it.
13:15Each ship also gets 128 vertical launch cells.
13:19For comparison, a Meyer-class destroyer or an Ali Burk has 96, while a Ticonderoga-class cruiser has 122.
13:27Initial armament is expected to be a mix of SM-3 and SM-6.
13:32The SM-3 family kills ballistic missiles in mid-course, outside the atmosphere,
13:36and has a demonstrated anti-satellite capability,
13:39while the SM-6 is a multi-purpose weapon that handles aircraft, terminal-phase ballistic missiles,
13:45some degree of hypersonic threat, and can be fired at surface ships.
13:48Japan is also a partner in the American-led glide-phase interceptor,
13:53designed specifically to hit hypersonic boost glide vehicles in flight.
13:57And there are two of them.
13:58The first is meant to be in service before the end of fiscal 2027, the second in the 2028 cycle.
14:05Which brings us to the last system.
14:07On March 17, 2026, a Kawasaki EC2 took off from Gifu Air Base for the first time.
14:14It is, many argue, one of the ugliest aircraft flying.
14:18A C-2 transport with a grotesquely bulging nose,
14:21two large fairings running in tandem along the spine,
14:24and two more on the rear fuselage.
14:26Japanese spotters nicknamed its predecessor as the Platypus.
14:30But the EC2 is a standoff electronic warfare aircraft,
14:33in development since 2021, and it's arguably the most important thing on this list.
14:38Its job is to sit outside the range of enemy air defences,
14:42and degrade radars and communications from a distance.
14:45Japan has previously indicated a requirement for four of them,
14:49whereas previously it had only one older EC1.
14:52Now let's assemble all of it and picture a Taiwan contingency where Japan is drawn in.
14:57Unlike what Duma circles would suggest, the first thing that happens is not a missile launch.
15:02Instead, Japan deploys the EC2 to work on Chinese sensors and communications from outside their reach.
15:08Simultaneously, F-35s carrying Argum ER could hunt the radars that survive.
15:13If the ASM-3 KAI's anti-air aspirations are real,
15:17Chinese early warning aircraft get pushed back out of useful range,
15:20and the whole PLA targeting architecture over the East China Sea starts running on degraded inputs.
15:26Then could come the sea denial layer.
15:28New SSMs and upgraded Type 12s could operate off Yonaguni and the other Nansai islands,
15:34off destroyers, off F-2s and P-1s, converging on an amphibious group from multiple axes,
15:40some of them court screwing through the gun defences.
15:43This threatens PLA amphibious formations and surface combatants inside the first island chain,
15:49which is exactly the water any Taiwan operation has to cross.
15:52And further toward the Japanese mainland, the ASEVs and the Aegis destroyers
15:57try to hold the ballistic and cruise missile barrage off Japanese bases long enough
16:02for those bases to keep generating sorties.
16:05And somewhere under the Philippine Sea,
16:07in the version of this that exists in about a decade rather than today,
16:11a future conventionally powered submarine equipped with vertical launch sails
16:15could hold Chinese bases at risk from a position that's difficult to locate.
16:19But China also likely fields thousands of missiles capable of reaching Japan,
16:24which is a bit of a problem, as Japan's ability to find targets hasn't exactly kept pace with its ability
16:30to hit them.
16:31Analysts have repeatedly flagged gaps in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance networks
16:36needed to locate and track time-sensitive targets like mobile missile launchers.
16:40A 1000km missile is worth very little without something telling it where to go,
16:45and that something is satellites, patrol aircraft and a sensor to shoot a chain that has to work under attack.
16:52This is further complicated by a supply chain problem.
16:55Ministry officials have warned that private supplies are leaving the defence market
16:59because the contracts aren't as profitable for the amount of work put in.
17:02The proposed fix is having a state-owned contractor-operated model where the government buys the factories and outsources the
17:09work.
17:10Another option is the earlier mention of mass-producing cheap attack drones.
17:14But this runs straight into the fact that Japan's commercial drone market is dominated by Chinese imports,
17:20and the components that make cheap drones cheap are overwhelmingly Chinese.
17:24Japan would need an alternative which adds more years to the timeline.
17:27And speaking of timelines, most of the systems here are still in their infancy.
17:33The submarine-launched hypersonic is in research.
17:35The ASEVs are still only two ships.
17:38The new SSM enters mass production next year at the earliest.
17:42Around 160 entries in Japan's 2027 budget request even have no specific funding amount attached,
17:49suggesting that the Japanese government is hedging its bets that new weapons development will yield some results.
17:55But Japan might have a plan to take care of all of that as well.
17:59On April 21, 2026, Prime Minister Sanai Takaichi's cabinet and Japan's National Security Council
18:06approved a revision to the three principles on transfer of defence equipment and technology.
18:11In plain terms, Japan scrapped the previous restrictions that had limited arms exports to five non-combat categories
18:18Rescue, Transport, Warning, Surveillance and Minesweeping.
18:22Instead, it allows the export of weapons with lethal capability.
18:26For reference, Japan's blanket export restrictions date to 1967, hardened further in 1976
18:33and with the single most visible expression of the country's post-war identity.
18:37And the 2026 revision is thorough.
18:40Equipment is sorted into weapons and non-weapons by whether it has lethal or destructive capability.
18:45And lethal exports are limited to countries that have signed defence equipment and technology transfer agreements with Japan.
18:52These include 17 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, France, Germany, Italy,
19:00the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, Mongolia and Bangladesh.
19:08Then in August, Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles and Japan's Shinjiro Koizumi announced an enhanced arrangement for Japan
19:17to use Australian missile ranges over the next decade, explicitly including Japan's hypersonic missile program.
19:24To see what that solves, remember that Japan is a narrow archipelago surrounded by other people's exclusive economic zones
19:31and its own dense population.
19:33You can't conduct full-range test launches of a thousand-kilometre hypersonic weapon over it.
19:38Geography has been a hard technical constraint on Japanese missile development for decades
19:43and Australia has essentially removed it and enabled the program.
19:47So what does a genuinely shared arsenal look like?
19:50The most immediate candidate is the anti-ship missile family.
19:53The new SSM's modularity is exactly what makes a weapon exportable.
19:58Australia, which is already buying Japanese hulls and hosting Japanese missile tests, is the obvious first customer.
20:04The Philippines, which has already bought Japanese radars and sits astride the Luzon Strait, is the second.
20:11An island chain where Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the United States
20:15all fire the same or interoperable anti-ship missiles from the same kinds of dispersed launchers
20:20is a fundamentally harder problem for Chinese planners than four separate national inventories.
20:25The second candidate is the industrial base itself.
20:29Japan's real contribution to an allied coalition may not be any particular missile but the shipyards.
20:35Mitsubishi Heavy Industries laid down the first ASEV in July 2025 and had the main mast on it by August
20:422026.
20:43American yards don't move at nearly the same pace.
20:46The third is sensors and electronic warfare.
20:48With the EC2, Japan becomes more and more capable of detecting enemy operations and relaying that information further.
20:56As for how China might react to this, it's currently watching Japan reinvent itself as a military exporter
21:02that can build advanced weapons at scale, test them and then sell them to neighbours so they all have the
21:07coverage of what China is doing.
21:09As for how that might impact the Sino-Japanese relationship, only time will tell
21:14as neither country is willing to make the overt first move until they're forced to.
21:24And if you want truly exclusive access, become a member to directly support the show.
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